Sisters is still 'home' for Cooper

"I've been aching to come home," said Marla Cooper as she walked down Main Avenue in Sisters on Monday.

Sisters has always exercised a powerful, almost mystical pull on the 48-year-old Oklahoma woman. A return has been a long time coming, and it came through circumstances she could scarcely have foreseen.

Cooper spent only about a year living in Sisters in 1972, but it was a year that made an indelible impression on a young girl who loved to explore the forest and go horseback riding with her friend Patty Oatman.

"I literally was a tree-hugger," she told The Nugget on Monday. "These are my roots. When we left Oregon, I mourned... My life was so nomadic, I guess you long for roots, you long for something familiar and stable and unchanging. This would be it."

Cooper got her long-wished-for chance to return to Sisters thanks to a symposium on the mystery of D.B. Cooper held last weekend in Portland (a link to a story on the symposium may be found below).

Cooper was a speaker at the symposium marking the 40th anniversary of the skyjacking of Northwest Orient Flight 305 on November 24, 1971. She had created a great stir in the active world of D.B. Cooper enthusiasts last summer, when she came forward with her belief that her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper, known as L.D., was the famed hijacker, who disappeared after parachuting from the plane over the forests of the Pacific Northwest. She believes the hijacking was planned in Sisters (see "Cooper case centers on Sisters," The Nugget, August 10, 2011, page 1).

Making the drive to Sisters after the symposium was a stirring experience for Cooper. She recalled swimming in Suttle Lake, and kept an eye out for buildings that seemed familiar. She planned to head out to Camp Sherman to see the Metolius River before heading back south.

Her family lived in the Brooks-Scanlon Logging Camp known as The Pines. She toured the area on Monday. No remnant of the camp remains; the area is now a housing subdivision. But the trees she so loved still stand.

Downtown Sisters has changed markedly since the early '70s, and Cooper was struck by the number of shops and the development of a tourist economy.

But despite all the changes, Sisters still felt like the place she remembers so ardently.

"It's beautiful," she said. "You know, it's the same place."

Cooper is working on a book, and spent a good part of her trip interviewing relatives and talking with a man who knew L.D. Cooper in his later years, long after he had disappeared from his family's lives.

Conclusive physical proof that L.D. Cooper was D.B. Cooper remains elusive, but no matter what else Marla Cooper's odyssey has brought her, it gave her an opportunity to come home.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

• Email: editor@nuggetnews.com
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